Death, Life and Other Things We Ignore
by December
Summary: After a year of lost, a daughter accompanies her father on a quest to understand his roots and from where he came.
1. In Remembrance

Death. It was what she was thinking about that morning as she sat on the train. It was an odd thing to think about on such a pretty spring day. Okay, it wasn't so odd, given what that day was. Her problem was that she was focusing on the wrong death at the moment.

"I cannot believe that you chose to wear black today. I am not sure how I am going to explain that," her father said.

She lifted her head to look at the man from whom she received half of her genes – and some of her attitude. His once pure blond hair was now streaked with silver and his eyes did not dance as much as they used to. Yet, in many ways, he hadn't changed much from the father she'd known for the eleven years that encompassed her entire life.

And he still didn't understand the religious holidays she held so dear, which wasn't that surprising. After all, he had been raised in a Buddhist temple. Her mother had been the Christian.

On a sigh, as she pushed memories of her mother out of her head for the moment, she replied, "You know what today is, Daddy. What else would I wear?"

Her answer frustrated him. And, after running his hand through his hair, he looked down at the piece of metal she continued to turn over in her hands. After realizing what it was, he sputtered, "And from where did you get the nail? There is no way that you carried that on the plane."

"Of course not. I found it in the hotel room."

"In the hotel – Imani Shinobu MacDuff, tell me you did not break anything to get the nail."

Imani Shinobu MacDuff. She really didn't know what her parents were thinking when they bestowed that name on her. Her father had taken her mother's last name when they married – that explained the MacDuff, her mother Armenta's inheritance from her absent white father. Armenta Ross MacDuff, in tribute to her own mother, had given her only daughter an African name, which explained Imani…barely.

Her middle name had come from her father. Apparently he had named her after someone that meant a lot to him. That was the justification behind the Shinobu. Imani had never really had the guts to ask her father if Shinobu was even a female name. He had rarely talked about his life in Japan.

Then, without any warning, just three months after her mother's death, Imani's father dragged her Japan, this country so foreign to her. He had said something about meeting old friends and spending some time with his adoptive family. People he had barely even spoken of before this point.

"Daddy…" Imani began as she stopped playing with the nail for the moment. "Since we are staying in…in…"

"A temple, Imani. We are staying in a temple. You do not need to act as if I had exiled you to somewhere undesirable."

"Okay, a temple. Will there be a church nearby? I mean, for Sunday."

"Now, Imani – "

"But we have to go to church on Sunday! We have to go!" she interrupted her father. Yes she realized it was disrespectful and normally she wouldn't do it, but this was important. "Sunday is Easter! I have to be in church on Easter Sunday!"

Her father made a noise of frustration. "Imani, will you at least try to compromise?"

"But I am compromising, Daddy! It's Good Friday. Good Friday and I'm not fasting and I'm not in church. No, I'm halfway around the world with my father. This is the first Good Friday, the first Easter Sunday without Momma and I – I – "

Imani wasn't proud of the fact that she burst into tears at that point. She had even dropped the nail into her lap so that she could cry into her hands.

Her father reacted, well, like her father. There were the awkward, yet comforting, pats on the head. To which he added – although she couldn't see him through her hands to be sure – the self-conscious glancing around the train car. She was probably embarrassing him. She really hated it when she did that.

As the train slowed to its next stop, her father leaned down to her and said, "Imani, we are here."

She took his hand, grabbed her nail, and followed him off the train almost on auto-pilot. She didn't even wipe her eyes until they were leaving the train station. Blinking a few times, she felt totally confused. This was a massively big city that her father hadn't been in for just over a decade. How did he know where he was going?

She held his hand as he led her across the street to stop in front of "A McDonalds? You're meeting your friends at a McDonalds?"

Her father didn't answer, he just pulled her inside. He looked around for a minute, started walking toward the seating section, and then he suddenly stopped. (So suddenly that Imani almost ran into him.) Following her father's gaze, she saw four people sitting at a table. 

They were all about her father's age and all Japanese. Given where they were, that should not have been a surprise, but given the multicultural group of family friends they had left at home, Imani found it surprising. The first one she noticed was obviously important. He wore an expensive suit and his hair seemed a silver-like purple in the lights of the fast food place. Next to him sat a bubbly female. At least Imani thought she was a female, although she was wearing a man's suit. The hair color had to be some unfortunate accident with hair dye. It couldn't be natural.

Across from then sat a red-headed man and a woman who must be his wife. The red-head seemed flustered and upset about something. Imani stared at him for a few seconds. She didn't know that Japanese people could have red hair. She hadn't known they could be blond either, but her father seemed to prove that last point.

The woman looked pretty in a way. She looked like she could have beaten you up when she was younger, but that time…and maybe a child or two, had calmed her down. Imani wasn't sure who the woman reminded her of, but she would have to think about it.

Were these her father's friends? They weren't what she expected. Well, at least maybe she could finally ask about her middle name. If her father ever started moving toward the table, that is. 


	2. In Limbo

"Death, Life, and Other Things We Ignore"

chapter 2: In Limbo

"Who would have figured it? The most religiously devoted of all of us wouldn't be a crazy Christian."

It was that statement with the accompanying laugh that caused him to stop his prayer chant and raise his head. Blinking a few times, he found himself looking into the smiling face of tan colored female with brown hair and brown eyes. "Excuse me?" he had managed to stammer out in the face of another thing that was so strange in this strange land where he was to study for a year.

"Well, you looked a little nervous about approaching the building. That and you were chanting. And you weren't praying the rosary; I have enough Catholic friends to know what that sounds like, which isn't really like chanting, come to think of it. Anyway," the strange woman shook her head before finishing her explanation, "for all of our holier than thou attitudes, as a group Christians don't pray nearly enough, and almost never in situations like this."

To this day, he wasn't sure how he answered her. Whatever he said had caused her to laugh again. "Oh, I'm not nearly as scary as I look," she'd replied. Holding out her hand, she'd continued, "I'm Armenta MacDuff, one of the resident crazy Christians."

He had taken her hand to shake it, barely remembering to do this instead of bowing, and replied, "I am Mitsuru Ikeda. It is nice to meet you."

That meeting had changed his life. Suddenly, instead of a year of studying abroad, he was transferring to the American university. Then he was engaged to Armenta, married to her, father of her child. It was a wild ride. One that ended abruptly when he had to bury her.

Armenta's death had a way of making Mitsuru rethink life, and a way of making Mitsuru realize from what he had been running away. For years Armenta had asked to see Japan or to learn a little more about his life there. He'd always put her off. First he would use the "they couldn't afford to go" excuse. Soon it was that they were just engaged. Just married. Then it was that Armenta was pregnant and couldn't travel.

After awhile, the excuses became a little harder, but more real. He'd said things like his family wouldn't know what to make of Armenta and their daughter, so he should contact them first. Or that he was adopted, so they really may be focusing more of their attention on their natural son. Or that Armenta would not be comfortable in a Buddhist temple, at least not until she learned more about that faith.

Armenta had taken the last excuse pretty seriously. When she died she had been halfway through a community college course on Buddhism. A few days before she died, they'd had an interesting conversation of what went into running a temple. At the end of the conversation she had said that their little Imani should learn little about Buddhism. Not to practice it, of course, but to better understand her father's background. Not even a week after that and Mitsuru had had to learn all about Christian burial customs and funerals, as he had to plan Armenta's.

He had been thankful for both Armenta's mother and his daughter. Although he had hated to lean on either of them, they at least understood what the heck a "Homegoing" service was or that there needed to be food afterwards and a wake before.

During much of the time after Armenta's death, Mitsuru was in a fog. Due to his beginnings in life, he was never quite comfortable in his own skin. It was always easier to take on some other persona or standing. He'd done it with Armenta, taking her name and throwing himself into her circle of family and friends. He'd even done it at Greenwood in a way, through his relationship with Shinobu and later Hasukawa and Shun. He was still an Ikeda at Greenwood, of course, but he rarely went back to the temple, and, with the exception of the scare involving his brother's high school and some other assorted incidents, he wasn't actively an Ikeda.

Not that that particular train of thought made a lot of sense.

The problem with changing like a chameleon is that you were never sure what your core was. He hadn't worried about that much at Greenwood, because in high school most boys were pretty core-less. He hadn't worried about it with Armenta, because she had a pretty strong core of her own, and an extended family with a strong sense of itself. Mitsuru had figured they would instill a core in Imani and he could go on as he was. As he had been for years. Then Armenta died and he gradually realized that he needed a core, because he was the one left with Imani. Imani, who deserved a more stable existence, a stronger sense of self, than Mitsuru had himself.

Before really thinking things through, he was suddenly arranging a trip home and planning to take Imani with him. It meant adding two weeks to her "Easter vacation" and clearing a ton of things with the private school that Imani attended.

He probably should have taken the time to clear a few things with Imani herself.

His daughter had had an interesting reaction to the trip so far. At nine years old, Imani hadn't seen the trip as an adventure, but as something that ripped her from all things familiar. She cried as they said goodbye to her grandparents and aunts at the airport. She spoke very little on the way over. She seemed very uneasy about staying in the temple. And she wanted to know if she was supposed to refer to the Ikedas as her grandparents.

Mitsuru hadn't known the answer to the last one himself. For the moment, he focused his daughter (and himself) on connecting with his Greenwood friends. Lots of phone calls and emails later, Mitsuru had arranged for his daughter and himself to spend two nights in a hotel and four at the temple, with a meeting with his Greenwood friends in between. Shinobu, Hasukawa, and Shun. He had fallen out of contact with them when he transferred to the American university. He wondered how they had changed since he had seen them last. The phone calls gave him a few clues, but….

Maybe it was because his head was so much in the past, and so confused, that he didn't notice his daughter's dress or temperament right away. As a nine year old female, Imani could obviously dress herself and Mitsuru had no idea what (if any) input he could add to the process. That was probably why they were on the train, halfway to their destination, before he processed her clothing. He had looked down at his seated daughter, trying to figure out how to explain her to his friends, and noticed she was in black. Head to toe, black. Was she fighting back on being forced to come on this trip?

"I cannot believe that you chose to wear black today," Mitsuru heard himself saying to his daughter, "I am not sure how I am going to explain that." That and a few other things. Although he saw his daughter as beautiful, his friends and his family – well the Ikedas – would see her as gaijin, strangely foreign. The attire choice wouldn't help dispel that image.

His daughter looked up at him and sighed. In disappointment? Maybe. What she replied was, "You know what today is, Daddy. What else would I wear?"

He knew what today was? Was he forgetting some anniversary or something? Or was it one of those Christian high holy days that he never seemed to remember? It was a Friday. Didn't those things usually fall on Sundays? He ran a hand through his hair, frustrated a little at trying to figure out the day. When he looked back down at his daughter, he noticed something silver in her hand. What in the world-?

"Imani," he said sharply, "from where did you get the nail? There is no way you carried that on the plane!" Of this Mitsuru was sure, given the current world of airport security.

"Of course not," his daughter answered. "I found it in the hotel room."

"In the hotel-" in his incredulousness over her answer, the high holy day that must be today finally settled on his brain. Good Friday, the day some important figure died. Crucified with nails. Imani and Armenta were both a little fanatical about that holiday. "Imani Shinobu MacDuff! Tell me you did not break anything to get the nail." Given everything else, such destruction wouldn't have surprised Mitsuru, even though destruction was not in Imani's character.

Imani ignored that point in favor of something she found more pressing. "Daddy, since we are staying in…in…"

Imani strange hang up about temples was beginning to annoy Mitsuru. He was trying…to do a lot of things. Imani was young. She was probably scared. The idea of Buddhist temples was still very new to her. But, if nothing else, didn't she trust him? "A temple, Imani. We are staying in a temple. You do not need to act as if I had exiled you to somewhere undesirable," he answered his daughter, trying not to snap at her.

"Okay, a temple. Will there be a church nearby? I mean, for Sunday," she asked.

'Shit,' Mitsuru thought to himself. Now that he thought about it, that Friday holiday was a lead-in to a bigger Sunday holiday. He even briefly remembered in high school how that Christian cult in the dorm had reacted to that big Sunday. Not being in a church on that Sunday was probably not going to sit well with his daughter, "Now, Imani – " he began, before she cut him off.

"But we have to go to church on Sunday! We have to go!" she interrupted her father. She was obviously upset, because she usually didn't interrupt him. "Sunday is Easter! I have to be in church on Easter Sunday!"

'Now what?' Mitsuru thought to himself. This whole trip was not gaining him any points with his daughter. "Imani, will you at least try to compromise?"

"But I am compromising, Daddy! It's Good Friday. Good Friday and I'm not fasting and I'm not in church. No, I'm halfway around the world with my father. This is the first Good Friday, the first Easter Sunday without Momma and I – I – "

Then his daughter burst into tears.

Mitsuru had never handled crying women well. What male ever did? Tears were always even more painful when they came from someone he loved, regardless of gender. It had torn at his heart when Sho had steamed and almost cried in front of him all those years ago. When Armenta cried, Mitsuru wanted to rip out his heart. But nothing – nothing - was worse than when Imani cried. Since she was placed in his arms as a tiny newborn, Mitsuru felt he was supposed to protect her from the world. Her tears always meant failure in that task for him. That, and he didn't know how to comfort her.

So, he patted her head as soothingly as he could. He was hesitant, both because he didn't know what he was doing, and because they were attracting attention. Although he'd lived with loud and expressive Americans for at least at decade, some of what Armenta called his "Japanese reserve" stayed with him. He didn't hug people often. He wasn't a fan of scenes…although uncrazed female attention never bothered him. It did bother Armenta, which was one of the reasons Mitsuru didn't treat women now the way he treated them in high school. Although, Valentine's Day was not nearly as much of a problem in the States….

It was that thought that snapped Mitsuru back to the present. As the train began to slow, he looked at the next station stop. It was so odd how familiar it felt, given that he hadn't gotten of at that stop since his first year after high school. "Imani, we are here," he quietly told his daughter.

That seemed to break through Imani's crying. Almost on auto-pilot, she took his hand, grabbed her nail, and followed him off the train. He was a little worried that she still held the nail or that she didn't wipe away her tears right away. But walking down a mostly familiar street, he suddenly felt his past around him.

He'd probably deny it, if someone asked, but he had actually forgotten about Imani for a moment as he walked along to the place where he was going to meet his friends. In a sense, they were his family as well. In an odd way, they might mean even more to him than the Ikedas did. Or, at least equally as much. And he had no idea how his past would react to his present.

Imani's voice filtered into his ear. She had asked him a question that he didn't hear, but he didn't worry about it. Walking inside the American transplant (how ironic of a meeting place was this?) he must have just pulled her in behind him. He glanced around briefly and then headed for the seats, not really seeing anything. It was when he saw them that he stopped.

There they were. The same, but different. Shinobu, still clearly in charge. Shun, still himself, laughing and smiling. Hasukawa…with his wife Miya, amazingly that continued to work out, flustered and arguing with Shinobu about something. Shinobu could still push buttons, it seemed.

And suddenly, Mitsuru MacDuff – or was it Ikeda Mitsuru – was afraid. When a person changes like a chameleon, it was easy to become confused when two clashing colors were present at the same time.

- to be continued -


End file.
